The paper presents selected issues related to the development of
international coal markets. World consumption of coal dropped for the
second year in a row in 2016, primarily due to lower demand from China
and the U S. The share of coal in global primary energy consumption
decreased to 28%. World coal production accounted to 3.66 billion toe
and it was lower by 6.2% when compared to the previous year. More than
60% of this decline took place in China. The decline in global
production was more than four times higher than the decrease in
consumption. The sufficiency of world resources of coal are estimated at
153 years – that is three times more than the sufficiency of oil and gas
resources. After several years of decline, coal prices increased by 77%
in 2016. The current spot prices are at the level of $80/t and are close
to the 2014 prices. In the European market, after the first half of the
year, coal prices reached the level of around 66% higher than in the
same period of the last year. The average price in the first half
amounted to PLN 12.6/GJ, which is close to the 2012 prices. The share of
spot trade in the total purchase amount accounted to approx. 20%. Prices
in futures contracts can be estimated on the basis of the
Japan-Australia contracts prices and prices in supplies to power plants
located in Germany. On average, the prices in supplies to these power
plants were higher by approximately 9% in the years 2010–2016 and prices
in Australia – Japan contracts were 12% higher than CIF ARA prices in
2017. Global energy coal trade reached about 1.012 billion tonnes in
2016. In 2019, a decline by 4.8% is expected primarily due to the
expected reduction in the demand in major importing countries in Asia.